Our Community

A Federation OfMavericks

Our students are part of a community that is committed to students' personal and professional transformation. Our community is rare among B-schools. We know it, and we nurture it.

We like to tell our students that “we’re smaller, so you’re bigger.”

The Tepper School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University are small by design. We believe that students flourish when they are given opportunities to explore, risk, relate and dream. Our community of undergraduate and graduate students are among the smallest of the leading business schools and universities — and that’s a good thing.

Our culture values a mindset in which ideas and opportunities are limitless — which is one reason the Tepper School does not have formal “departments.” From day one of our founding, the school’s structure has omitted the silos of separate departments. We frequently find economists, social scientists and finance professors working together on common problems. Cross-campus collaboration is an inherent dynamic and one we never take for granted.

Our community thrives on differing views, backgrounds, experiences and beliefs. The energy and innovation that results from a tight-knit global community is difficult to describe, but we’ll give it a try:

Impressive faculty access: The Tepper School boasts one of the best student-to-faculty ratios of any leading business school. We will know your name; you won’t be a number. Your professors and your classmates will be interested and involved in your life. Our auditoriums are not vast lecture halls — teamwork, discussion, analysis, exchange, cutting-edge research, presentations and technology-enhanced learning are characteristics of our classroom settings.

Hundreds of rich, campus-wide options that fit interests, talents and curiosities: From rugby to research and Greek life to global study, student life is designed to help students grow personally and professionally. Every student has an opportunity for leadership roles; there are no “lottery systems” for Tepper student clubs.

Lifelong friendships are the norm: Some of the most interesting people you will ever meet in your lifetime will be your Tepper School classmates. From deep-rooted friendships to business partners (and a surprising number of marriages), the relationships that are formed within our community last a lifetime. There’s something about the experience of taking risks and making discoveries that creates a powerful, tight-knit international federation.

Access to the Carnegie Mellon campus: When we talk about collaboration, we like to think we offer the gold standard. We’re not talking about the option to take courses outside the business school or working with some students on a research project. There’s a better way to learn, and we think we’re onto something that is rare in higher education. We have begun to co-locate interdisciplinary programs in order to accelerate and heighten innovation. What this means is that we are removing the physical boundaries, deepening our existing cross-campus partnerships, and aggressively identifying programs that team professors, researchers, students and corporations on problems that matter to the world. (Think business meets robots meets designers meets biotechnologists).